Oh Helliax, yeah, says
Tony.
It’s often said that we
only saw the best of Peter Davison’s Fifth Doctor when his Tardis team had
thinned out to just one companion in The Caves of Androzani. That move gave the
Fifth Doctor time to flex his Doctor-muscles, to fill up space with his persona
and really take events by the scruff of the neck, for all they took him right
back on Androzani, faced with a planetfull of venal people.
The Helliax Rift, by Scott
Handcock, has that same Androzani vibe – the Fifth Doctor arrives on Earth
alone, chasing an enigmatic alien signal, only to run into UNIT, but not as we
know it.
This is a UNIT somewhere
between the comfy days of Lethbridge-Stewart, Yates, Benton and Harry Sullivan
and the stompy ‘Oh, shhhhame’ days of Bambera and Zbrigniev. As such, the
members of this incarnation of UNIT are an unknown quantity, and for the most
part, they regard the return of their scientific advisor as rather a pain in
the bum as they too are on the trace of a peculiar alien signal…and quite a bit
more.
This is the UNIT of
Lieutenant-Colonel Lewis Price, Corporal Linda Maxwell, and Lieutenant Daniel
Hopkins, successor to Harry Sullivan as UNIT’s chief medical officer. It’s Hopkins
(played by Blake Harrison) who becomes the Doctor’s de facto companion on this
adventure, but crucially, Handcock pushes the Davison Doctor forward, being
less diffident than he sometimes was on screen, with space and time to strut
about a bit, check-mate those who threaten him and simply get on with the
business he believes is his. Like Androzani, it’s a Fifth Doctor story that
shows you what the Fifth Doctor was really capable of, and that earns it many a
gold star. The new UNIT mob are at the very least, interesting in this outing –
they’re scheduled to come up against Colin Baker’s Sixth Doctor and Sylvester
McCoy’s Seventh in subsequent releases – even if, throughout this story, you
begin to wonder whether Lieutenant-Colonel Price, played by Russ Bain, is really fitted to a career in UNIT, so
regulation army does he seem. But then, back at the very beginning, who knew
that Lethbridge-Stewart fellow would come so good?
The fundamental story of
The Helliax Rift has resonances in other corners of the geekiverse – there’s a
research facility where aliens are experimented on, bringing a later-Buffy vibe
to proceedings, and there’s a story of intergalactic love which tips its
foldable panama hat at Guardians of the Galaxy II, but the heart of The Helliax
Rift has more in common with Kramer Vs Kramer or Mrs Doubtfire than anything
more obviously geeky – the lengths to which people will go to ensure the
welfare of their children, and the inherent bond between parents and children,
no matter what the cost, no matter what the distance.
While the Doctor and UNIT
pursue their various inquiries, alone and together, there are plenty of
mini-puzzles to solve, allowing the Davison Doctor to show his mettle and his
mental agility, and prove why UNIT really works better with a genius on board.
The action elevates in logical steps, giving the story solid stabs of
cliffhanger that keep you listening and spin the time away without you being
too distinctly aware of what happened to the couple of hours of the runtime. If
there are occasional pauses where people stand around asking questions –
there’s quite a lengthy interrogation sequence when UNIT catch up with the
researchers – they do at least add that essential sense of UNIT procedure that
made the Seventies UNIT stories what they were. No-one quite has to call Geneva
for authority or back-up, but the pauses show the fundamental difference
between the Doctor’s maverick approach and that which would be required of an
Earthbound military organisation.
The Helliax Rift is a story
built on those three pillars – New UNIT, family connection, and a barnstorming
role for the Fifth Doctor. Of the three, it’s really the Fifth Doctor that
you’ll take away from The Helliax Rift though, Davison, who’s been given some
sublime scripts recently, like David Llewellyn’s The Serpent In The Silver
mask, pushing the Doctor to the front of the action and the front of the
listener’s mind as well or better than any of the other incarnations have ever
done. Davison of course is long past the point of needing validation of his
incarnation, but stories like Androzani and The Helliax Rift show the strength
and development of his Doctor’s character from his uncertain ‘never quite sure
what you’re going to get’ beginnings into the Time Lord in full command of his
powers and skills. That later, more confident Fifth Doctor is the one who turns
up in UNIT’s backyard to tackle The Helliax Rift, and it makes a story of
family ties and UNIT running around a forest into something brighter, stronger,
and more indefatigably stamped with the flavour of the Fifth Doctor at his
absolute best.
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